If there's one thing I believe more than I believe anything else, it's that you can't fake the core. The truth that lives there will eventually win out. It's a god we must obey, a force that brings us all inevitably to our knees.

I had problems a therapist couldn't solve; grief that no man in a room could ameliorate.

It's still true that literary works by women, gays, and writers of color are often framed as specific, rather than universal, small rather than big, personal or particular rather than socially significant.

Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear in our lives.

My family didn't go to church. Once when I slept over at the house of a friend, her parents brought me to Sunday school with her. I was given this little pamphlet of tiny poems about the natural world, about butterflies and sunsets. My 7-year-old self was so astounded by how these few words were creating pictures and feelings in me.

I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.

I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.